Sunday, 1 June 2014

Utram

-Brian Mendonca

What better way to spend a
Sunday afternoon than to watch a tiatr?
The feast of options available during this season leaves one spoilt for choice.
Tiatr is vibrant in South Goa. Banner
headlines greet you in the newspaper with colourful ads heralding the tiatrs which are to be performed.

Margao is blessed with Gomant Vidya Niketan’s
AC hall and Pai Tiatrist AC hall at Ravindra Bhawan. An ad announcing the last
show of Utram written and directed by
comedian Ambe made us wait back in Margao last Sunday to take in the 3.30 p.m. show
at GVN. This was after a leisurely lunch at a beach resort at Colva by the sea.

What we liked best was that
it started on time and wound up by 6.10 after an intermission of 10 minutes.
The social ‘message’ was simple. Utram /
‘Words’ showed how the words we use affect the lives of those around us. The old and the handicapped are often chided
with harsh words for no fault of theirs and feel unloved and unwanted. What we prefer doing is throwing flowers in
the river in memory of the dead but fail to show our concern and care for them
when they are living with us.

The 2½ hours sped by. The tiatrists provided a gleeful take on
current happenings and endowed it with heaps of satire and wit. With political
satire; buffoonery; laying of bets where the loser always loses; slapstick
comedy; soulful songs; crisp dialogue; dazzling and often outrageous costumes
-- it was a spectacular affair. Though we reached an hour earlier we preferred
the back row (Queenie suggested ‘Q’ row) where we could scuttle out anytime we
wanted. But we stayed right till the end, with baba braving the AC and attempting (unsuccessfully) to get some
sleep.

Here was creativity at its best
-- without too much sexual innuendo -- offering family fun with even a few
‘ghost’ scenes thrown in. The ghosts
raid the kitchen every time they make an appearance and once disrobe the
tattler (aptly called Aadhar Card-ozo) to teach her a lesson! Saxtti Konkani
had us in splits with the cameo of the frustrated music director taking
auditions -- dejected that there are no singers worth their salt in Konkani. Hopeful
singers screech their songs in Hindi, Tamil and English to no avail—except for
an assault on the ears! The lungi dance
is performed with a Goan twist.

Numerous Goans vacationing in
Goa at this time soak in their mai-bhas
/’mother tongue’, brush up their Konkani, and get acquainted with local issues.
Alternately, tiatrists travel within
the country and abroad to present their tiatrs.

It is interesting to simply
sit and watch the crowd who attend the tiatrs.
There was a person who could not
walk – he ‘climbed down’ the staircase on his buttocks. An enormous lady could
hardly sit. Both of them, despite their severe bodily limitations, came anyway
to watch the tiatr. The appeal of tiatr remains undiminished to tiatr-lovers. See one today!

Published in Gomantak Times Weekender on Sunday, 1 June 2014; also see 'Comedy's Ambe-saddor' by Daniel de Souza in The Goan, 28 September 2013 at http://www.thegoan.net/The-Great-Goan-Weekend/Tiatr/Comedy%E2%80%99s-Ambesaddor/06016.html; pix source; article.wn.com